Peace Studies programmes
Apr 15, 2010
from the entry on PCPJ Blog:
Michael Westmoreland-White compiled this....
As a service, I thought I would list all the U.S. colleges and universities that have programs with names like “peace studies,” “peace and global studies,” “peacebuilding and conflict resolution studies,” etc. I found there were enough that I decided just to list the church-related ones and do the others in a separate post. Typically, such programs are multi-disciplinary involving faculty from several departments including international studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, international law, economic development, and/or political science or sociology. The earliest such programs in the U.S. were in institutions related to the “historic peace churches” (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren, and Friends/Quakers), but it has spread beyond them.
....That’s all the specifically Christian colleges or universities in the U.S. with Peace Studies programs that I have found. If I have missed some, please alert me and I’ll add to this list. In a later post, I”ll add in programs at schools without a faith-based perspective, including the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Believe it or not these programs are quite controversial. During the Bush years, many conservative magazines and websites ran articles and advertisements against these programs, saying that they had declared war on America! Let’s face it: Peacemaking is subversive of the status quo–regardless of which party controls the government or who lives in the White House (or any other nation’s seat of government). When peacemakers come on the scene: Jesus or Buddha or Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Aung San Suu Kyi or Thich Nhat Hanh or Badshah Khan or Dorothy Day–they are always seen as troublemakers and disturbers of the peace, rather than as peacemakers.
